The €50 million given to Vitals Global Healthcare in 2016 and 2017 were for “recurring costs” and the government would have spent that money anyway, even if VGH had never entered the picture, according to Health Minister Chris Fearne.

The government paid VGH €16 million for the period between June and December 2016 and another €33 million for 2017.

Originally the government had passed on €18 million to VGH for 2017 but on the last day of Parliament for the year it won approval for an additional €17 million to be passed on to VGH for the same year. This happened just one day before the government made the announcement that VGH was being sold to Steward Health Care.

VGH was granted the concession to run three state hospitals Karin Grech, St Luke’s and the Gozo General Hospital – for 30 years, in March 2016. The company effectively took over management of the hospitals in June.

The agreement stipulated that services for Maltese nationals would remain free while the group would invest and modernize the hospitals. VGH would also use part of the facilities for medical tourism – a niche which it would run independently of the public service and from which it would make a profit.

The idea was that the three hospitals would be run by a private public partnership, with the government paying a certain amount per year to VGH, which would in turn provide public healthcare services.

The deal was mired in controversy from the start because VHG had no previous experience in the healthcare sector and the ultimate beneficial owners behind it remain unknown to this day.

In December, just 21 months into operations, VGH announced that it would sell its concession to Steward Healthcare Systems, a US company that runs a number of hospitals in North America. The deal was finalized last month.  The Malta Independent had revealed that VGH had decided to sell off its concession after it found itself in serious financial trouble. Questions about the financial standing of the group had been raised from the outset. The profit made by VGH from the Steward deal is unknown.

The Opposition has cried foul over the deal, and has repeatedly asked where the €50 million forked out by the government have gone. Opposition Leader Adrian Delia last week said the government should not have allowed the anonymous investors to “walk away with €50 million.”

Delia has filed a case in the courts to nullify the original government-VGH deal and return the hospitals to the public.

The Nationalist Party has pointed out that no real investment was made by VGH at the three hospitals, apart from the purchase of a heli-ambulance and minor renovations.

In Gozo, the site where the Barts medical campus was supposed to be constructed remains a large empty hole. VGH also missed several contractual obligations, including increasing the number of beds at St Luke’s and Karin Grech.

In an interview with The Malta Independent, the Deputy Prime Minister implied that the €50 were never meant for modernization.”The €50 million “are the recurrent costs that government spent for services in Gozo, Karen Grech and St Luke’s (where there are the physiotherapy and orthotics departments) and which government spends with or without Steward,” he said.